Book em: "When March Went Mad"

Thirty years ago, Magic Johnson and Michigan State would beat Larry Bird and Indiana State for the 1979 national title. Many believe the game was the linchpin that catapulted the NCAA tournament into a billion dollar industry. Seth Davis, of Sports Illustrated and CBS, has written When March Went Mad, The Game That Transformed Basketball. He talked about his book that appears in bookstores today. (Book jacket courtesy of Times Books; illustration by Micah Kraus; design by Nicholas Caruso)Growing up were you a Magic guy or a Bird guy?I was a Len Bias guy. This game happened 2 ½ weeks before my ninth birthday. I have no recollection of watching this game. It must have been past my bedtime.

Did you find it be a seminal game for a lot of people? It is amazing to me, when I’ve said to somebody that I’m writing about the ’79 game, they gaze into the distance like they can see something. They say ‘I remember watching that game. I remember where I was. What I was doing.’ I wanted to transport people back 30 years. I wanted to tell a story. It was the last huge sporting event before the big (television and internet) explosion that we are all living in today.

The book ends with Bird still lamenting the loss.Jimmy Breslin always said the better stories were in the loser’s locker room. Hang out with the winners but write about the losers. That is where you get the poignancy. For Larry Bird to show public emotion that has to (happen) once every Halley’s Comet. As soon as I heard (his comments) that I said “that is how I am ending the book.”

Could you have asked for better main characters?It is hard to imagine two guys at the same time being more alike and more different. But both only truly cared about winning. I watched, on DVD, at least 15 games of each of them. I have now resolved in my current roles to never again say of a current player that this guy reminds me a lot of Magic Johnson or this guy is just like Larry Bird. I’ve never seen players as good and as unique.

Any reaction from the subjects of the book?

They are now just getting it. I sent the book to (Michigan State coach) Jud (Heathcote). He had read half the book and he was enjoying it. He was the one guy I was a little bit concerned with. The reality is you cannot write worried about that. I don’t anticipate that because it was not that kind of book.

Are you satisfied with it?

I’m pretty comfortable where it is. There are a couple of things that people have told me since it was done that had I known I would have put them in. You can always talk to someone else. There is always a paperback. We know there won’t be a sequel and that is the beauty and the tragedy of it.

Is this a book of history or remembrance?

My goal from the beginning was that I did not want this to read like a textbook. I wanted it to read like a novel. I love to read history. If it is done well it should read like a novel. Because of the nature of the times there was so little press that even if you lived through it there were things you did not know. You now have a prism to look back.

Indiana State coach Bill Hodges is probably the tragic figure in the book. Would things have been different if Indiana State had won?

It is interesting. I think it would have been changed but maybe only at the margins. Even if they had won it was a reality that he was going to have to start the next season without Larry Bird. Would winning have brought him more equity with the school? Probably. But at the end of the day he suffered fairly or unfairly from the notion that they only got to where they were because of Larry Bird was there.

Had this been fiction would anybody have believe it?

You are only as good as the material you have to work with. When you have really good material you present it and get out of the way. I don’t consider myself a writer who can go on for five or six pages drinking in my own brilliance. My strength has lied in my strength as a reporter and I knew very early on I had an unbelievable story to work with. My goal was to report it as well as I could, the smaller the detail the greater the value, if I could stick to that philosophy. You don’t want to beat the reader over the head with this.

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About Reid and Mike

Reid Cherner has been with USA TODAY since 1982 and written Game On! since March 2008.

He has covered everything from high schools to horse racing to the college and the pros. The only thing he likes more than his own voice is the sound of readers telling him when he's right and wrong.

Michael Hiestand has covered sports media and marketing for USA TODAY, tackling the sports biz ranging from what's behind mega-events such as the Olympics and Super Bowl to the sometimes-hidden numbers behind the sports world's bottom line.